Talk:Riley Stavros/@comment-2227733-20120917162912
I enjoyed Riley's character throughout the entirety of his run, with the exception of one episode. The "plots" post Shoot to Thrill, however, I utterly detested. Part of this has to do with the fact that the "writers" clearly don't care about Riley at best and at worst they outright despised him. It's made even worse that they paired him up with a selfish, callous boy who clearly cares nothing about Riley's hopes, fears, and dreams and at one point actually sabotages his attempts to come to terms with himself. Now about the OOC abomination that is Beat It. This episode reads like spitefic, and a poorly done one at that. What is really boggling is that they have no legitimate reason to hate Riley. The characters they prop (Zane, Declan and especially Drew and Eli) display outright abusive behavior at times and feel no remorse for their actions, and in the case of Drew, is a character who meets all twenty criteria of Hare's Psycopathy Checklist. That being said, let me delve into just why beat it (it doesn't even deserve capitalizations). Before he was only portrayed as violent one time, and that was because that was the first time he had ever been accepted by anyone despite his sexuality after it's made clear that he was raised to believe that he was something less than human. And let's face it, in Real Life, when guys kiss their guy friends, the kissee does not remain the friend of the kisser. Riley's fear, while a bit overblown, was nonetheless reasonable given the prevalence of homophobia and his past. In Bad Medicine, he has clearly improved in this aspect, as he only resorts to violence after prolonged use of steroids (complete with psychotic hallucinations - which in itself was the product of desperate, fearful desire to be normal rather than what most athletes use it for), and after prolonged dickish harrassment from Sac, and only finally resorted to violence in a heated moment before an important game, and when Sav had tried to physically invade his privacy and calling him the thing that he was most afraid of. Even then, Riley immediately stopped when Peter tried to pull him off, which is far better than many steroids users fare. After that, he was immediately remorseful and admitted to being wrong, which is more than you can say of certain Jerk Sues. In beat it however, his anger has been blown wildly out of proportions previously shown and borders on being a dangerous lunatic (though it's still worth mentioning that he only did this under significant emotional turmoil and was immediately remorseful, which is again, more than you can say for certain other characters). Even more ridiculous is his interaction with the women in the episodes. In every other episode (even in season 10 and 11), he was shown to always be kinder, sweeter and in general more of a nice guy towards women far more than he was towards the men. He only took the intimacy to levels which the girl was comfortable with, doing what she wanted to do on both shown dates, and by Fiona's own admission was sweet and charming. Out of all the jock type characters, he arguably treated girls the kindnest out of all the other jock type characters. In beat it on the other hand this characterization is completely thrown out the window and stepped and spit upon. He tries to use women for his own goals. He practically forces himself upon Fiona and instead of showing his characteristic remorse, he yells at her even though she's trying to be nice to him. He again does this with Chantay, and while her reaction would otherwise be awesome, this only happens because Riley's character was so horribly mangled. Furthermore, instead of trying to make it up to Fiona like he would've done in any other episode, he screams at her and calls her a bitch (albeit she was mocking his self-hatred). It borders on making him into an outright misogynist. This episode is not only absurd whenever you take into account his characterization up to this episode, but characterization afterwards. He is never shown reaching anywhere near these levels of JerkAssery ever again, and indeed it is not even touched upon. But the only reason this episode doesn't constitute a BLAM Episode is because at the end he admits to being gay. I have a theory as to why the "writers" did this: To justify the following abuse of his character. In the OOC spitefic that is Beat It, Riley displays the sociopathic behavior worthy of the aforementioned Gary Stues. In this way, whenever the "writers" trivialize him and treat him like crap, this essentially is their way of saying "Well he deserves it." Anyone who says that they don't piss all over him needs to rethink and rewatch his episodes. Even my 31-year-old friend, whose late twenties/early thirties friends are merely casual watchers of the show are dissapointed with the way Riley is dumped on.